Strategies To Grow Your MVNO

Recently, our friends at MVNO Nation in the United Kingdom published an eBook entitled Strategies For Growth For MVNOs.  With a current worldwide market value of $70 Billion, MVNO growth is expected to surpass $148 Billion by 2032, just nine short years ahead.  Operators see the number one issue going forward as competition.  MVNO Nation’s eBook explores how an MVNO can not only survive this new competitive environment but GROW using both new and proven strategies.

Speaking with MVNO Nation Co-Founder Ewa Campbell, she stated that, 

“In this eBook, we’ve sought advice from the best of the best on how to grow and scale your MVNO, and crucially, how to provide your customers with what they are looking for from you.”

It is not at all surprising that competition is the number one issue that is facing MNVOs.  Just look at what Big Cable has done, led by Charter and Comcast, now with almost 11 million wireless subscribers.  The experts that contributed to MVNO Nation’s eBook clearly have defined strategies to differentiate, distribute, take risks, and make it simpler to do business.  I hope you enjoy these excerpts.

Three Ways To Find Growth

Let’s take a look at what MVNO experts are saying the key strategies are to find growth – and stand out from the crowd.  First, Benjamin Grimm, Head of Carrier Relations, Freenet Group, says to;

"Look Beyond Demographics." 

“Home in on behavior, attitudes, and what customers are looking for. Whether your target audience is in their 20s or their 70s, the chances are that, ultimately, they’re looking for the same thing: simple, easy-to-use solutions from companies that help them to manage their daily lives hassle-free.”

Matt Kennedy, Chief Commerce Officer, giffgaff adds,

"Don’t Rely on Stable, Go-To Niches."

“We believe that specific niches won’t necessarily continue to be stable go-tos.  And even if you could identify a niche today, the same one probably won’t be there in two years’ time.  When you’re part of a portfolio of brands, this can also help define which brand does what for each group; what problems you can solve, and how to avoid as much overlap as possible in order to get to the greatest aggregate value.

Finally, Mike Mills, Director of Cloud & Infrastructure Partners, Gamma states, 

"Explore New Business Spaces for Opportunities to Disrupt" 

“My advice would be to look at market opportunities where there’s displacement technology. We have PSTN switch off happening across Europe – this means that a significant portion of that base is open to MVNOs. People aren’t going to want fixed phone lines and fixed broadband lines anymore, which makes this an opportunity to be tapped into.”

The Key Takeaway: Forget traditional target audiences and demographics. Instead, focus on behaviors, attitudes, and what it is that customers – regardless of age, gender and job title – are looking for.

Scaling Your Business

Jignesh Dave, Founder & CEO of Next360 scaled his business from start-up to a multinational MVNO in a short period of time. 

“We started selling SIM cards in our distribution market and we saw two extremes. One was WBT – way before technology – which is another way of saying that people wanted physical SIMs. But in the forums that we were running, people were asking for eSIM.  We had grandparents traveling from markets like India to Europe who had no idea what eSIM is. They aren’t, understandably, clued up about technology or connectivity. At the other end of the scale are the millennials who sit at the same table, connecting but not actually talking to each other!”

The Key Takeaway: When you’re trying to scale, you’ll have to balance being valuable, unique, desirable, and difficult to imitate with the actual day-to-day running of your business. In order to do all of this effectively, ensure you have trusted partners in place that you can lean on for support.

Top Innovation Tips

Five experts contributed their insight into how to revolutionize your offerings to give your customers the service they want.  

• Make your offers hassle-free
• Learn lessons around legacy
• Perfect the art of personalization
• If it’s not simple, shelve It!
• Identify and motivate

Thank you (in order) to Martina Klingvall, CEO, Telnes Tech; Frank Bekkers, CEO, Mobile Vikings; Danielle Royston, CEO & Founder TelcoDR & Acting CEO Totogi; Harjot Singh, CEO, Reach Mobile, and Nicolas Girard, Founder & CEO of Oxio.

Each of these experts and innovators offers advice that can be boiled down to three words, Simplify, Simplify, Simplify.  Martina wants to make the customer journey digital end-to-end, especially on the back-end support side, ensuring a “hassle free” journey for her customers.  Frank spoke to long-term MVNOs and found that legacy systems were taking up too much of their IT department’s time and that they could build faster than legacy MVNOs.  The key was to understand simplicity and make it the most important part of their process.

Danielle focuses on what differentiates the customer’s experience between MVNOs.  She believes that managing your data insights can lead to personalizing your offering to how they are using the network, where they are going, etc. This gives her company the ability to provide personalized offerings that help customers get better deals.  Harjot learned that even with months spent trying to innovate a new process or offering, even when it worked great, they couldn’t simplify the user experience, so they shelved the idea.  He said, “If it’s not simple but is in fact clunky, we’re just not going to put it out.”  

Finally, Nicolas felt that we shouldn’t be relying on getting information the way we did 25 years ago; some apps were delivering things in 48 hours.  Customers want information immediately and “these are opportunities where MVNOs can really raise the bar.”

Business Expansion And New Services

The same five experts were asked what to keep front of mind with regard to business expansion.  Nic Girard touched on privacy and giving the customer the ability to say yes or no to opting in.  Harjot Singh stressed "Keep It Super Simple" in launching an MVNO for a new company. Danielle Royston had experiences as an end user from a carrier pushing personalization that didn’t go well.  She advises experimenting as an MVNO but taking it slow and allowing your customers to opt-in or opt-out.

Martina Klingvall took advantage of technology and digitalization to disrupt and operate globally, not locally.   Finally, Frank Bekkers sees the need to put specific offerings in the front of their packages and the telco services in the back; for example, an entertainment or environmental offer first, to get a niche customer.

The Key Takeaway: Experimentation is key, but getting things sorely wrong can do more damage than good and could even erode your brand.

While this eBook is not the end all to being a successful MVNO, there are lessons contained within to be learned by all of our current MVNOs, here and abroad.  As the United States Ambassador for MVNO Nation, I am pleased to share a high-level look at what the experts are telling us based on their own personal trials and errors around the globe.  I am also happy to share additional strategies to help your MVNO not only survive but grow in these sometimes uncertain times.  Reach out to me at [email protected]

Access the eBook at https://share.hsforms.com/19cZ5oCr9Q7un-rNEBDBg_Q5jfsi

Thanks, and GOOD SELLING!

Jon